mahogany

So I went to pick up this rauli chilean made small closet because we need something to leave our shoes and umbrellas and whatever not since at the moment we are bit short on drawers in the house. Anyway, I'm loading the thing into the guy's truck when I see something that looks like a mahogany desk. With brass ends on the legs and dovetailed drawers. I look closely to the drawers waiting for pine or another cheap secondary wood, but what I find? more mahogany. The full thing is made from wide and beautiful wood. How much I ask, cheaper than the rauli thing. I take both, I said, 300usd or so. At chilean prices that pretty much the price you pay for wood only on the cover 90x145x2.7cm of clean mahogany.

The best thing is this small notch all the drawers have at one side. I thought it was a cut somebody made by mistake when I saw the first, but after further inspection it's a closing mechanism. Inside the desk there is a spring mechanism that closes the drawers if the front drawer is closed. Beautiful.

It seems, sadly, that julia is keeping it.

Addendum:

After around 3 hours of work with alcohol, oil and a pad, the top is starting to look nice:

Compare with the fist picture:

I estimated that 10 hours will suffice for the top.

Most of the lines are gone and I have some shellac with benzoe diluting there to fill some annoying gaps on the surface. That will be a thick drop of shellac directly onto the holes, maybe applied with syringe. Then more spiriting (I think that's the name anyways, saw a guitar maker doing that).

Julia decided that it was to nice wood for her and I can keep it. I will plane all the no-show surfaces that the maker left rough just for the sake of planing this beautiful wood. The other show surfaces will be only cleaned and patched where needed, I don't want to make it look any newer than what it is.

Now it's at 5 hours: